The Bruce Lee Code: How the Dragon Mastered Business, Confidence, and Success

by Thomas Lee

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself; do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”
—Bruce Lee
 
Bruce Lee was a brand well before that became commonplace. Step into the Dragon’s mind and explore how he thought about business, goals, and life.
 
The Bruce Lee Code focuses on the business strategies prevalent in Lee’s life and teachings that helped unlock his full potential. Bruce Lee’s attention to brand is a major reason why he continues to influence pop culture today. He was a pioneer, being one of the first Hollywood stars to start his own production company.
 
To recharge America’s creative and entrepreneurial swagger, we need to reexamine Lee’s life and teachings. Although he died in 1973 at age thirty-two, Lee remains a global icon who continues to influence the contemporary world in ways both obvious and subtle.
 
Lee was primarily known for his otherworldly martial arts skills and blockbuster movies such as Enter the Dragon and Fist of Fury . But he was also a man of incredible vision, willpower, and intellectual curiosity whose brief career inspired highly successful projects in Hollywood, sports, comic books, video games, and fashion.
 
In many ways, Lee resembled Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. Both men possessed remarkable self-assurance and a desire to disrupt the status quo. Jobs did not invent the computer, tablet, or MP3 player. Instead, Jobs’s genius was taking existing products and ideas and turning them into something better. Lee also did not hesitate to liberally borrow and emulate. He fused Eastern and Western ideas and techniques to make unique films that would appeal to worldwide audiences. He created his own unique style of martial arts and philosophies that drew upon a deep reservoir of historical and contemporary influences.
 
This book draws upon Bruce Lee’s extensive writings, including letters, journals, and business documents, as well as interviews with those who knew him personally.

Genres: Biography, History

224 pages, Paperback

Published April 3, 2023

Reviews

[Christina LaRose · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very interesting book! I really enjoyed how the author weaves together biographical information about Bruce Lee with the business lessons we can learn from his life. At the beginning of the book, the author does a great job of providing important context about the current economic climate in the US. I really appreciated the author’s statement of purpose: to “inspire entrepreneurs, the kind of people who have made America such a prosperous nation.”

Thomas Lee expertly weaves together interviews with Bruce Lee’s family and friends, along with top executives and entrepreneurs who admired him. I learned a lot from the author’s inclusion of Bruce Lee’s own words and writings. Specifically, I appreciated how the author goes into a lot of detail about Bruce Lee’s vision, strategy, and tactics. I came away from this book with a deeper understanding of Bruce Lee’s extraordinary contributions, as well as how I can apply the lessons I learned from his life to my own goals. I highly recommend this book!

[Malik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary
The Bruce Lee Code by Thomas Lee (no relation) is a short treatise on how many successful businesses apply the philosophies of Bruce Lee into their own successes. The author draws on large corporations and individual entrepreneurs and artists alike to illustrate examples in which Bruce Lee inspired these entities.

What I liked
I liked that this book was concise. It didn't overly drag out the examples used in order to artificially inflate page count. As someone who has read a lot about Bruce Lee (from him and about him), this book presented many facts about Bruce Lee in a unique way that I had not considered previously.

What I disliked
Some of the examples the author uses seem to be a stretch. For example, Bruce Lee has a famous "Chief Definite Aim," which was a vision he saw for himself to be the highest paid Asian actor in the United States. The author compares this vision to the corporate mission statements of companies like Target, Google, and Apple. While I can see that those things are similar because they're explicit written goals, I think that's about as far as the similarities go. There were also a few typos and misquotes in this book. I can forgive both of these, but the misquotes seem to come from the various entrepreneurs and artists who claim Bruce as an inspiration. Look, I get you don't have to know exactly what somebody said in order to be inspired by them, but it reads as if these people saw the quote once in a copy of Black Belt Magazine or they watched "I am Bruce Lee" and got in touch with the author and said "Oh, yup, I'm totally a lifelong Bruce Lee fan! I was definitely thinking of him when coming up with my company designed for selling two-factor authentication on the web!"

Conclusion
This book isn't a long read, and it does present Bruce Lee from the interesting perspective of a business startup, so if you're interested in both martial arts and business, it's worth checking out. But like many other books that you find in the business section of your bookstore, you're not going to get a better sense of starting a business after reading this.

[Monta | IG montareads · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5)
Bizness | Filozofija | Iedvesma | Politika | Ekonomika | Pašizaugsme

Grāmatas ideja – izmantot Brūsu Lī kā iedvesmu biznesa un personīgajai izaugsmei – man likās pievilcīga. Autors uzsver viņa elastību, spēju mācīties no visa un palikt uzticīgam sev. Tie ir principi, kurus arī šodien var izmantot ikviens.

Tomēr grāmatas pirmā daļa mani vairāk mulsināja nekā aizrāva. Tā vietā, lai uzreiz pievērstos Brūsam Lī, autors gari raksta par Amerikas ekonomiku, politiku, procentiem un statistiku.
Dažbrīd šķita, ka tas pārtop par politisku komentāru ar spēcīgu “aziātu virzīšanu pret Trampu” toni. Man tas likās lieki un ne pārāk piemēroti šai grāmatai.

Vēlāk grāmata kļūst daudz spēcīgāka – tur parādās vairāk Brūsa Lī filozofijas un dzīves skatījuma. Īpaši atmiņā palika ideja “esi kā ūdens” – pielāgojies, neiesprūsti vienā formā, izmanto šķēršļus savā labā. Šie citāti un atziņas patiešām iedvesmo.

Kopumā – nav slikta lasāmviela, bet vairāk to nosauktu par biznesa un politikas eseju ar Brūsa Lī piesitienu.

Ja meklējat biogrāfiju, šī nebūs īstā grāmata, bet iedvesmas graudus no Brūsa Lī mācībām noteikti atradīsiet.

[Jeanette Wonder · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a life! I’ll admit, I’ve seen only one film of his. But like the world, how does one not know of Bruce Lee and the influence he has had?! I enjoyed learning more of Bruce’s legacy. Gained more respect for his morals and challenges he took on and overall, the book just made me smile.

The 3 stars are mainly cause I felt I was reading a high school assignment. It certainly didn’t flow and often times repetitive information. I’d wonder if I put my bookmark in the wrong place but then look at the page number and think, “nope”.

I won part of a Goodreads promotion and I am thankful for it. And thankful to know some more about Bruce Lee.

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a decent survey of Bruce Lee, his lasting impact, and how his maxims mean something in a business sense. By no means a replace for any authoritative bio — but a decent read still with some good ideas.

[Cris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick, entertaining, informativef read. Bruce Lee is facisnating. Author kept it interesting. I'd suggest it.

[Mitch Ping]

"Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind."

[Steve Cran · Rating 5 out of 5]

 

Among the greatest of entrepreneurs certain name have a way of standing out. Steve Jobs, Bill Gate, Elon Musk and several others. One of the best known who had an entrepreneurial spirit was Bruce Lee. Now Bruce was an icon a hero that everyone looked up to. Know for his martial arts prowess and chiseled physique but little do people know that he was an entrepreneur. Bruce had big plans . He wanted to combine the east and the west and show everyone the good parts about Chinese culture. His way to do that involved show casing his Kung Fu skills. His original plan was to open up a string of kung fu schools. When Bruce found that he would reach more people with the cinema that is the route he took.  His role as Cato in the Green Hornet propelled him to fame and his character was the main item of the show. People liked Cato. After that role was finished Bruce did not have any roles. Being flexible and brave he went to Hong kong started his own production company and made several movies. Later he had a stronger bargaining . One could say that if he had plans on opening schools and then later he opened his own production company that he was pretty entrepreneurial.

When compared to someone like Steve Jobs he was an innovator. Bruce took what was there and made it simpler.  Easier to use. If anyone remembers using computer or technologies before Apple it was clunky and difficult. Now Apple products are one of the easiest to use and other tech companies have copied this approach. Bruce Lee also made things simpler. He hated forms and patterns and useless movement that cluttered up the martial arts. He wanted to make it more efficient and useful for  combat. Using Wing Chun as a basis he studied more fighting styles and he took what was useful and discarded the rest. He formulated his own martial art called JeeT Kune Do.

Not only did Bruce study martial arts and exercise routines but he was learning about eastern and western philosophy. He also studied camera angles and script writing.  A good entrepreneur is always curious and learning new things because when you start your own business you must do everything yourself.  If Bruce wanted to realize his vision of introducing kung fu and his philosophy to world he would have to do more than just act. Bruce had to write his own scripts, choreograph fight scenes and learn the basic of production.

Hollywood back in Bruce’s time was very racist. Chinese or Asian actors had limited roles.  Often times when certain characters were Asian in a movie they would often cast a white person to that role. Bruce himself was paid the price of a stuntman for his role as Cato in the Green Hornet. He had fewer spoken lines then his Caucasian counter parts. Bruce knew this racism was wrong but he had and enlightened outlook on it. It was wrong but he understood their reluctance and said that if an American came to Hong Kong he might experience the same thing. This impacted Bruce in a lot of ways. First off he taught Kung Fu to all nationalities something that the Chinese masters frowned upon at first. The second is that he reflected that sense of discrimination in his films. The Chinese Connection showed how Chinese and dogs were not allowed in a park. In Enter the Dragon you have an African American being pushed around by cops. Finally Bruce was like water. He was flexible. He knew America was a closed market so he went to Honk kong.

No nuggets here just the gist. Gonna have to read the book and pull out the nuggets yourself.